Britain's Secret Plans for Quelling Insurgency, and Turmoil in Ukraine

Update at the end:

From the Daily Express, March 2, 2009:

“TOP secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a ‘summer of discontent’ in Britain.

“The ‘double-whammy’ of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the extraordinary step of the Army being put on standby. MI5 and Special Branch are targeting activists they fear could inflame anger over job losses and payouts to failed bankers. 

...

“What worries emergency planners most is that the middle classes, now struggling to cope with unemployment and repossessions, may take to the streets with the disenfranchised. The source said ‘this potent cocktail is reminiscent of the poll tax riots which fatally wounded Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1990.’

 ...

“Were that to be the case, the Government has a contingency plan to deploy troops on the streets of Britain’s major cities.

“A senior source said: ‘This is a very real, and very serious, problem.’

“’I can tell you there have been crisis talks in Whitehall about this.’

...

“’We are not just talking about the problems of immigration and British jobs for British worker. We are also talking about mass unemployment.’”

End of excerpt.

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A few observations.

First, things have been heating up dramatically in Europe over the last few months with fierce demonstrations breaking out in numerous countries such as Iceland (which went bankrupt due to its unalloyed embrace of neoliberal policies), Italy, France, England and now Ukraine. The scope for contagion is broad indeed.

Second, things are going to get worse with the worldwide economic crisis, brought on both by the fundamental nature of capitalism, and specifically by neoliberal policies of deregulate, privatize, enrich (obscenely) those who are already rich, repeatedly and remorselessly slash jobs and benefits, and shred the social safety net.

Third, the concerns being expressed above about the middle classes joining in with the working class is not hype but a real danger for the powers that be. That is the combination that led to Deng X'iao Peng cracking down violently on the 1989 protests in China, to the power of 1968 in France, to the end of the Shah of Iran's rule in 1979, the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the demise of many governments historically. I have written about this in my Water Line series especially Part 1 and 2 and in an article about the 1989 Spring Uprising in China.

As I put it in part in Water Line Part 2:

“The cynicism the oppressed feel about the legitimacy of those who rule over them and over the whole of society comes from the lessons of their everyday existence. The dispossessed do not rise up in ordinary times not mainly because they are under illusions about the system’s nature but mainly because they know that if they rose up they would be immediately crushed by the forces of the state. …

“The middle classes, by contrast, go along because they have a strong belief in this system’s legitimacy and the electoral process in particular. They believe that the candidate with the most votes takes office. They believe that their vote matters and that public opinion overall guides public policy. They believe that America is a democracy. Should enough of the middle classes conclude that the process is rigged, illegitimate, and corrupt, that those who lead us are dangerously incompetent, and that they are endangering our lives and this planet, elements of the middle class will, together with the lower strata, begin to act outside the normal channels of electoral politics and shake this system to its core.” (Pp. 41-42)

Fourth, the deployment of troops in the "homeland" is not only something being planned for in Britain but something that has already happened in the U.S. See here. See also my remarks at the end of The Water Line, Part III, on "Known Unknowns."

The terrain we are about to traverse is fraught with great crisis and grave danger. Thinking that things will go back to even a semblance of normal any time soon is a major mistake. In times of great danger there is also great opportunity. The bankruptcy of these governments and their policies is open to widespread and deep exposure. If such exposes and organizing occur in sufficient measure, then the chance to wrest some radically different future out of the monstrous mess that we are in will be before us.

As I wrote in Water Line Part III:

"First, the system we live in – global capitalism - is inherently unstable and dangerous whether you look at it from a local, national or international perspective. The spheres of the local, national and international are so intertwined that they cannot sensibly be separated as though events in one sphere do not impact the others.

"Second, stability and security are more things of the past than of the present and, especially, the future. Massive dislocations and dramatic, startling changes to the status quo are not the stuff of science fiction but that which the DOD [Department of Defense] itself now finds it must take seriously." 

Update from today's New York Times front page story about the turmoil in Ukraine that threatens to topple the government:

“Steel and chemical factories, once the muscle of Ukraine’s economy, are dismissing thousands of workers. Cities have had days without heat or water because they cannot pay their bills, and Kiev’s subway service is being threatened. Lines are sprouting at banks, the currency is wilting and even a government default seems possible.

“Ukraine, once considered a worldwide symbol of an emerging, free-market democracy that had cast off authoritarianism, is teetering. And its predicament poses a real threat for other European economies and former Soviet republics.

“The sudden, violent protests that have erupted elsewhere in Eastern Europe seem imminent here now, too. Across Kiev last week, people spoke of rising anger about the crisis and resentment toward a government that they said was more preoccupied with squabbling than with rallying the country.

“The sign held by Vasily Kirilyuk, an unemployed plumber camped out with other antigovernment demonstrators here in the past week, summed up the pervasive frustration: 'Get rid of them all,’ it said.

“Mr. Kirilyuk did not hesitate to take that further. ‘There will be a revolt,’ he said. ‘And people will come because they are just fed up.’

"Mr. Kirilyuk, 29, was standing in the same central square where throngs in 2004 carried out the Orange Revolution, a seminal event that brought to power a pro-Western government in Ukraine. He said he was a fervent supporter then of the protesters, but now he and a few dozen others who have set up tents here are demanding that the heroes of that revolution step down."

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When elections don't resolve the problems that the voters thought they would, eventually the contradictions that led to the "change" election, the problems that brought a new government to power on the hopes of the people, resurface in renewed intensity. The attitude of "they all must go" seen here in countries from Iceland to Ukraine is a sign of the times and bodes ill for those public officials and economic mavens who think that they can stop the will of the people permanently - whether those leaders occupy the White House or the Kremlin.